C.R.A.F.T. # 31: License Plate Map

I’m not going to lie, this was pretty tricky… my mom, me, and one of my best friends all worked on this one together…it currently lives in my mom’s house! If you are seriously interested in making one, feel free to e-mail me with ANY questions…craftaway [at] gmail [dot] com. I will help you as much as I can.

Here a few tips for this lovely piece of license plate art:

1: My mom bought a set of 50 license plates on e-bay. She had to specially order 2 black Texas and 2 blue CA ones (for this size, TX and California took 2 plates)

2: My mom and dad made the board the map it attached to. They just used scraps of wood, and stained it…(my mom was excited to use her miter box!)

3: We found a free printed map in an old National Geographic magazine that was the perfect size.

4: We cut out each individual state to use as a template for the license plate map.

5: The map you see in the picture was our reference guide. It gets tricky in the Northeast!

6: Not all states have to be cut out perfectly, some of them are under another plate…most of the time you only need to cut out 2 or 3 sides of a state.

7: We used white nails…to blend into the plates and painted a few tips of nails to match the specific color of the plate (blue for CA, black for TX)

8: We started with the North Dakota to Texas row.

9: We used tin snips to cut the plates…this worked well for most of the license plates.

HERE is an update post with more tips and better instructions for making the original license plate map.

I love it!! I have been wanting to do a headboard with old license plates for my son. They are hard to find… And you have one from each state… That is so great!!! Great job!! :O) I will have to check out ebay now!!! Thanks!!

I just saw this on One Pretty Thing and it caught my eye! I actually bought an original piece of license plate art from Aaron Foster 5 years ago. That is when I first saw this type of art and I fell in love with it. He is now more famous, used to have a show on HGTV but has since gone bigger and is in Target. The funny thing is I haven't found a spot for the artwork I bought from him yet…it was way bigger than I had thought and can't find a wall big enough for it. But I still love it! I can't believe you did one yourselves. It looks really awesome, congratulations that must not of been easy. It looks great. Here is his web site if you want to take a gander.http://www.aaronfoster.com/base.html

just saw this on one pretty thing. Wow do I love it. My hubby and i just saw something like this at Target and my hubby was entranced. (he loves geography and traveling…) I was trying to come up with a way to make one myself, but figured I wouldn't be able to find the stuff I needed. I can't believe you can order plates on e-bay! So now I really want to make this for my hubby for Christmas. Can you tell me how much the plates cost?